Gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey starred in eleven novels and a number of short stories by Dorothy L Sayers, between 1923 and 1942. A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and finally by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife.

Jill Paton Walsh, was an English novelist, best known for her Booker prize-nominated novel ‘Knowledge of Angels’ and for completing and continuing the work of Dorothy L. Sayers on the Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane mysteries.

In 1998, at the request of the Sayers estate, Walsh completed Dorothy L. Sayers's unfinished Wimsey-Vane novel ‘Thrones, Dominations’, which received high acclaim.  In 2002, she followed this up with another Wimsey novel ‘A Presumption of Death’, based upon notes by Sayers.  Two wholly original Wimsey novels then followed.  In 2010, Walsh released ‘The Attenbury Emeralds’; her last addition to the series, ‘The Late Scholar’, was published in 2013.

Lord Peter Wimsey and his wife Harriet Vane are settling into their new life together in 1930s London. But when murder strikes in their own social circle, Harriet becomes drawn into a very unexpected case…

Dorothy L. Sayers began writing Thrones, Dominations in 1936. Pressure of work led her to set it aside, but she never returned to it.  Later the trustees of the Sayers estate asked Jill Paton Walsh to complete it. The result is worthy of the mistress of the golden age of the crime novel.

Read by Ian Carmichael

Here, using “The Wimsey Papers”- in which Sayers described life in Britain during World War II - Jill Paton Walsh devises an irresistible story set in 1940 at the start of the Blitz. While Lord Peter is abroad on a secret mission, Harriet Vane, now Lady Peter Wimsey, takes their children to safety in the country. But there’s no escape from war: rumours of spies abound, glamorous RAF pilots and flirtatious land-girls scandalize the villagers, and the blackout makes rural lanes as sinister as London’s alleys. And when a practice air-raid ends with a young woman’s death, it’s almost a shock to hear that the cause is not enemy action, but murder. Or is it? With Peter away, Harriet sets out to find out whodunit…and the chilling reason why.

Read by Edward Petherbridge

The recovery of the magnificent gem in Lord Attenbury’s dazzling heirloom launched a shell-shocked young aristocrat on his career as a detective in 1921. Thirty years later, a happily married Lord Peter has just shared the secrets of that mystery with his wife, the detective novelist Harriet Vane. Suddenly, the new Lord Attenbury - grandson of Lord Peter’s first client - seeks his help to prove who owns the emeralds. As Harriet and Peter contemplate the changes that the war has wrought on English society - and Peter, who always cherished the liberties of a younger son, faces the unwanted prospect of ending up the Duke of Denver after all.

Read by Edward Petherbridge

When a dispute among the fellows of St. Severin’s College, Oxford University, reaches a stalemate, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers that as the duke of Denver he is “the Visitor” - charged with the task of resolving the issue. It is time for Lord Peter and his detective novelist wife Harriet to revisit their beloved Oxford, where their long and literate courtship finally culminated in their engagement and marriage.

At first the dispute seems a simple difference of opinion about a valuable manuscript that some of the fellows regard as nothing but an insurance liability, which should be sold to finance a speculative purchase of land. The voting is evenly balanced. The warden would normally cast the deciding vote, but he has disappeared. And when several of the fellows unexpectedly die as well, Lord Peter and Harriet set off on an investigation to uncover what is really going on at St. Severin’s.

With this return to the Oxford of Gaudy Night, which many readers regard as their favorite of Sayers’s original series, Jill Paton Walsh revives the wit and brilliant plotting of the golden age of detective fiction.

Read by Matthew Brenher